


Shore Leave

by dire_quail



Category: Star Wars Legends - All Media Types
Genre: Fanfiction, Gen, Original Character(s) (SW Legends) - Freeform, Space Vegas and Defection, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:21:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23229289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dire_quail/pseuds/dire_quail
Summary: A stormtrooper goes on shore leave, and nothing is what it seems.
Relationships: Original Male Character(s) & Original Male Character(s)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3
Collections: Worldbuilding Exchange 2020





	Shore Leave

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yujacheong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yujacheong/gifts).



“You know I have to ask.” 

The sterilizing isolate is no bacta patch, but they can’t all be outfitted like an army. 

“What, why I didn’t let those two mess your pretty face up?” Vals’ host—savior? Captor? He’s still working that one out—drawls from over by the apartment’s sink, where he’s depositing ice into a small rag to use as a makeshift cold-pak. An actual, manual sink, with faucets and ice dispenser and everything. Vals watches him carefully; he’s in _his_ apartment, after all, and frankly, Vals wouldn’t have expected anyone to come to his rescue earlier. He’s not entirely sure he didn’t just… out of the attempted murder by hostile locals and into the Rebel kidnapping. 

Which is not how the saying goes. Also, no one kidnaps a stormtrooper. 

His host shrugs, diplomatically elegant, and turns back toward him, lights from the Zeltron cityscape outside catching and glittering on the earrings that dot the shell of his ear. The light in the room is low enough—mostly through the cracked ‘fresher door and the bare lights around the mirror—that most of what Vals’s seeing is in the glow from the “non-stop party” over on the Strip. 

His host still looks finely dressed—especially for an off-Strip bar favored by locals—but it’s something else, seeing him back in the context of his own quarters. The spare appointments, the minimal lighting accented by installations Vals is sure his host added himself, are all blue-black in shadow, the overlaying color changing every so often as something new takes over the lightshow a couple klicks away. It feels almost as empty as any other apartment Vals’ been in, for officers or otherwise. It has a quiet defiance to it of the world around it, and Vals can’t place why, but he figures it has something to do with his host standing there, regal and impatient, contained and organized in the face of the sifting sea of chaos out there in the “non-stop party” that is Zeltros. 

But it’s not like Vals ever really believed that that was one hundred percent true all the time. 

He looks Vals up and down, arch and impassive with his sharp, slender jaw and dark blue-purple skin. Vals’ skin prickles under that gaze; he’s had evaluations from his superiors that feel less incisive and take ten times as long. “I’m a humanitarian. Be a shame to let a face like that go to waste.” 

Vals considers how he wants to play this, briefly. “Who said it was gonna get wasted?” He lets the half-grin that’s gotten him out of (and into) so many situations spread across his face. Doesn’t even have to remember that he has his face out. 

It’s been remarkably easy, this whole leave; maybe it’s something about being planetside. Comes back like he just came from Agamar, the pace of farm life, stopping to talk and careful to smile—like he hadn’t spent the last six years as a grunt plugging whatever holes the Emperor needed them to with their bodies, becoming so accustomed to not having a face that sometimes he forgets to use it in conversation. 

His host snorts softly, eyes closing briefly. “Please. Don’t play dumb. The rest of that bar would’ve eaten you alive if they thought you could fight them to a _tie_.” 

“And you’re just that much of a saint, huh? Stepping in for a suspected Imperial who strayed from his lane Below the Belt?” 

“Below the belt” is a euphemism, so like every other euphemism, Zeltros had to go and make it literal; “The Belt” being, of course, the nonstop party in orbiting cities and literal skyscrapers. Below that, on the planet’s surface, is where some of the more unorthodox activities could be found that Zeltros acknowledged and entertained, but didn’t necessarily want to become known for. Like the fighting. And the locals. 

For Vals, it’s a chance to disappear, even if it’s just for a week under an alias. 

His host shrugs again, liquid and nonchalant. “You know. Empaths. Can’t _bear_ to watch a being in pain and all that.” 

“They were empaths too.” Vals points out. His host rolls his eyes. 

“Oh, and we all experience _that_ the same.” 

Vals can’t resist one jab. “I mean, don’t you? If it’s _real_ and all—“ 

His host’s eyebrow rises precipitously. “Do you _want_ me to tranq you, drag you back down to the bar, and leave you there?” 

Vals holds up his free hand. “Alright, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. Thank you, again. Especially for this.” He lifts the cold-pak from his bruised cheek. “You didn’t have to.” 

“Honey, to get you home safe? You wouldn’t have made it down the block once they clocked you.” 

It’s not untrue. 

“Then I owe you a lot more than a thank-you.” Having the helmet off lets Vals breathe in other ways, too. The rhythms of his voice, his father’s voice; bothering to modulate the tone because it won’t all be flattened by suit hardware. “You get why I’m asking, though.” 

His host looks him over, assessing. “Pulling your ass out of the fire is one thing, but I do _not_ bring people home to give them the Empath 101 talk. And you look like you need the 90-level, too.” 

His eyebrow flicks up briefly, like he found something he was looking for. Like maybe he liked what he found. Or like maybe he wasn’t surprised by it. 

“And if we’re doing interviews—what’s a stormtrooper doing drinking alone in an off-Strip bar on Zeltros, anyways? You’re not a local.” His eyes flick up and down Vals’ body, that sharp piercing feeling following. “You didn’t go to the Arena for the fights. And you didn’t go to one of the clubs, either.” 

Well, there goes his entire cover—though, to be fair, he was hiding from _Imperial_ surveillance, not local or Rebel, for all that Zeltros is the most Rebel-friendly planet Vals can imagine. But more important to him, his superiors wouldn’t take kindly to him choosing to spend so much time around an “inferior” species, let alone the _degeneracy_ of the Zeltrons. “How d’you know I _wasn’t_ at a club?”

He scoffs. “Honey, I _know_. And so would everyone on this block, if you’d been to one.” 

Empaths. 

“I just wanted to go somewhere _next_ to where the party was happening. Disappear into the crowd. Y’know?” 

His host’s face splits into a grin. 

“Well if you wanted help with that, why didn’t you just ask?”


End file.
